date: Tue Mar 1 08:40:42 2005 from: Phil Jones subject: Future Directions to: Gabi Hegerl , Tom Crowley , Gabi Hegerl , myles , Tim Barnett , Nathan Gillett , "Stott, Peter" , David Karoly , Reiner Schnur , Karl Taylor , francis Dear All, I've knocked Chris off this reply. There is a meeting of the CCDD program next week in Asheville. I guess Chris wants something for this. I'm on the panel, so if you want to add to what Gabi and Tom have put together then let me know and I'll feed that in additionally to what is already there. From being at the review last week of the vertical temperature trends panel, the issue of reducing forcing uncertainties is important. A number of people think that agreement in the 20th century is all doing to model tuning due to uncertain forcing with sulphates. How to counter this is one area. One of my own pet areas is trying to reduce uncertainties in the paleo record for the last millennium, but again this is one of convincing people that we really know what has happened. So much is being made of the paleo records, but are they that important to detection when most of the work is going on with the 20th century records. Is the pre-20th century really that important when it comes to D&A? Cheers Phil At 20:45 28/02/2005, Gabi Hegerl wrote: Hi IDAG people, Chris Miller needs some input on where detection is going and what should be funded, appended is a list Tom and I sent him as rapid response, but it sounds like they are still in the process of thinking about this, so please reply (soon) if you have additions/comments (Chris, only thought of sending this now, I hope results will be still helpful) Gabi 1) extending detection to other fields, esp. U.S. possible variables are circulation, anything hydrological (drought, average rainfall), climate extremes, storms, all this is getting more feasible as observational data get better, reanalyses get more reliable (although trend sstill questionable), and models get better and have higher resolution 2) compiling "showable" scorecard of what has been detected in the system already 3) abrupt changes - Tom thinks the relevance has been overstated of past changes in the thermohaline circulation (because of proximity of massive amounts of ice/freshwater). However, I think it would still be useful to find a fingerprint of predictors for thermohaline shutdown (from waterhosing experiments), and establish how early warning signs can be detected. Another aprupt change that could be dealt with are events such as the mega drought cycles in the western U.S., which our preliminary work indicates does not correspond with multidecal peaks in warmth for zonal average temperatures. 4) using paleoclimate data for understanding regional responses to known forcings, such as pulse of volcanism in early 19th century. tests of a model's predictability on regional scales. this however would require ensemble runs and a fair amount of legwork, so probably would be best as a proposal than as an IDAG project. 5) more surface temperature detection as already donw, to keep analyzing 20th century from models as model diagnostic and evaluating how to get most model performance information out of this diagnostic. For this, updates of forcing estimates, particularly reduced sulfate aerosol uncertainties would be useful. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Directions in D&A Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:51:56 -0500 From: Chris Miller Reply-To: christopher.d.miller@noaa.gov Organization: NOAA To: Gabi Hegerl References: <4216317A.7020700@noaa.gov> <421A4F67.1040201@duke.edu> Gabi, I'm looking for some quick thoughts, which probably means just you and Tom. Obviously, the rest of IDAG would have ideas but it would take some time to poll them (I could see it as an agenda item at the IDAG meeting). If you had a couple highlight items by Thursday morning, that would be helpful as I have an internal meeting where this will be discussed. Thanks again, Chris Gabi Hegerl wrote: Chris, by when do you need this? From the whole IDAG or just, eg from me and Tom? Gabi Chris Miller wrote: Tom, Gabi, As you are probably aware, one of the recurring challenges for federal program managers is to indicate to upper management what the science priorities in the future should be. NOAA is more future-looking than it has been in the past and we are now being called upon more frequently to respond to this question. A simplistic answer would be "more of the same" since we are doing such good work now. This could be part of the answer, but not the whole answer. NOAA is interested in new science thrusts, new observational programs or analyses, new institutional arrangements, etc. (the "new is better syndrome"). I would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to think about this issue and send me a few bullets on where you think the community should be going on D&A, for both continuing and new investments (from the perspective of the work that IDAG has been involved in to date). Thanks for your help and look forward to the next IDAG mtg. Chris -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gabriele Hegerl Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School for the Environment and Earth Sciences, Box 90227 Duke University, Durham NC 27708 Ph: 919 684 6167, fax 684 5833 email: hegerl@duke.edu, [1]http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/bios/hegerl.html -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gabriele Hegerl Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School for the Environment and Earth Sciences, Box 90227 Duke University, Durham NC 27708 Ph: 919 684 6167, fax 684 5833 email: hegerl@duke.edu, [2]http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/bios/hegerl.html -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gabriele Hegerl Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School for the Environment and Earth Sciences, Box 90227 Duke University, Durham NC 27708 Ph: 919 684 6167, fax 684 5833 email: hegerl@duke.edu, [3]http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/bios/hegerl.html Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------